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Leaders of human rights, consumer and healthcare groups spoke out today in an appeal to Hershey's leadership demanding reforms to the candy maker's corporate social responsibility practices, including the company's ongoing use of abusive child labor in cocoa production.

New data from Mintel’s Global New Products Database (GNPD), has spotlighted the most frequent health-focused on-package claims for new products in the food and beverage industry. For 2011, topping the list was “kosher,” which appeared on 27 percent of new products.

Pennsylvania's House of Representatives spent three hours Monday night debating a proposal to end nearly 80 years of state control over liquor and wine sales and sell the business to private operators, only to go home without taking a vote.

Bokashi is based on an ancient Japanese practice that ferments food waste by covering it with a mix of microorganisms that suppress its smell and eventually produce soil. Bokashi is not widely used in the United States, but its practitioners think it should be.

The health ministry will ban restaurants from serving raw beef liver, a popular dish in Japan, from July 1 in the wake of a series of food poisoning incidents caused by raw beef, including fatal cases last year, a government panel agreed Tuesday.

Ferncroft Country Club is among a few places in the nation trying an obscure form of composting called bokashi. Based on an ancient Japanese farming practice, food waste is covered with a mix of microorganisms, which suppress its smell and eventually composts to produce soil.

In 2009, a team of researchers from the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Public Health and Purdue University reviewed five randomized trials that studied the effect of drinking sugar-sweetened beverages on body weight. “We found no significant effect on overall weight reduction as a result of reducing intake of sugar-sweetened beverages,” explains Kathryn Kaiser, Ph.D., instructor in the SOPH. “Since this was published, two other randomized trials have been published, and neither showed large effects on weight change.”

According to a study by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, chicken products from every participating city and grocery store chain tested positive for fecal contamination, with 48 percent of chicken samples testing positive overall.

The Campbell Soup Co. on Monday purchased a landmark building in the impoverished city of Camden, N.J., as part of a plan to redevelop the neighborhood surrounding the corporate headquarters of the Fortune 500 company.

Shares of Diamond Foods fell more than 5 percent in premarket trading as the food company announced that won't be able to file some quarterly financial reports by Monday and expects a delisting notice from Nasdaq.

Anyone who meddles with Canada's food supply will soon get more than a slap on the wrist, the Conservative government said Thursday as it introduced new measures to streamline the food inspection system and impose towering fines against violators.